Eskom ends load-shedding early

Eskom has announced that it will suspend load-shedding at 20:00 on Sunday, 13 March 2022.

The South African power utility said that it had recovered generation capacity sufficient to end the scheduled power cuts before it had originally expected.

Eskom said that total unplanned breakdowns had been reduced to 12,422MW, while planned outages due to maintenance total 6,540MW.

“Since Friday, Eskom teams have returned four generation units to service. The emergency generation reserves have also sufficiently recovered,” Eskom said in a statement.

“Eight other generating units are expected to return to service by Wednesday evening.”

The power utility emphasised that using electricity sparingly on Monday and Tuesday would be critical.

“The system will remain contained on Monday and Tuesday and it is expected that extensive use of emergency reserves will be required ahead of the units returning,” Eskom said.

“Eskom, therefore, requests the assistance of all South Africans to continue using electricity sparingly.”

The power utility also apologised for implementing load-shedding over the past week.

South Africans started the week with the news that Eskom would be implementing stage 2 load-shedding from 17:00 on Monday, 7 March, until 05:00 on Wednesday, 9 March.

Further breakdowns followed the announcement, resulting in Eskom extending stage 2 load-shedding until 05:00 on Saturday, 12 March.

The power utility was forced to increase load-shedding to stage 4 on Thursday, 10 March, after more units broke down.

The country ended the week on stage 2 load-shedding, which was expected to last until 05:00 on Monday, 14 March.

Main Image: Jacaranda